National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018 -- Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Good morning, Mr. President. First, I would like to talk about taxes.

Today, President Trump and Republican leaders will announce several proposals as part of their tax plan. According to recent reports, that plan will include proposals to repeal the estate tax, lower the rate on passthrough entities, lower the top rate, and actually raise the bottom tax rate. Each of these proposals would result in a massive windfall for the wealthiest Americans and provide almost no relief to middle- class taxpayers who need it most.

It seems that President Trump and Republicans have designed their plan to be cheered in the country clubs and the corporate boardrooms.

How does repealing the estate tax help middle-class people? Only 5,200 of the wealthiest families in America, couples whose estates are worth $11 million, pay the estate tax. Are there any middle-class families worth $11 million? Is that the President's definition of the middle class?

The estate tax is skewed to the very wealthiest among us, and they are going to repeal it. This is not going to fly with the American people, let me tell you.

Our Republican colleagues tried to do something the public disliked on healthcare--taking away benefits, reducing healthcare. Now they are trying to do the same thing on taxes, helping the very wealthiest. They are going to be in for a rude awakening because the American people are going to rise up against this. Over 70 percent of Americans are against tax breaks for wealthy Americans and wealthy corporations.

Lowering the rate on passthrough entities would create a huge loophole, allowing very wealthy Americans, such as hedge fund managers, to funnel their income through a business entity in order to avoid the top bracket and pay a much lower rate. So the upper middle-class family making $100,000 or $200,000 or $300,000 can pay 39 percent, but these wealthy hedge fund managers, lawyers, and whoever, through a passthrough, can pay no corporate tax and then a 25-percent rate on the rest of their taxes. Does that help middle-class Americans? Absolutely not. Does it help the wealthiest who have the lawyers to set up these passthrough entities? Absolutely.

By lowering the individual top rate, the top 1 percent, who make above $490,000 a year, would get a tax break because their rate would be lowered. God bless them. They make a lot of money. Do they need a tax break? I don't think so.

President Trump clearly believes, despite his rhetoric, that the wealthy in this country deserve another tax cut while middle-class families at best get crumbs. Amazingly, the Trump tax plan will even include a proposal to increase the bottom tax rate--a punch to the gut of working Americans.

The American people should be able to see the principle behind President Trump's tax plan in this one fact. He proposes to cut taxes on the highest income brackets and raise them on the lowest. He raises the bottom rate and cuts the top rate. This is ``wealthfare''-- ``wealthfare''--helping those of great wealth with more tax breaks.

The American people should be able to see the principle behind President Trump's tax plan with little more than an across-the-board tax cut for America's millionaires and billionaires. God bless them. I am glad we have a lot of rich people in America. I don't begrudge them.

Many of them have worked very hard to get their money. Some of them get it through an estate; so be it. But the wealthiest among us don't need a tax break. They are doing great.

All of the statistics show that those at the highest end are making more money than ever before and the middle class is flat or sinking.

Who needs the break? The Washington Post-ABC poll showed yesterday that more than 70 percent of Americans say our tax system already tends to favor wealth more than the middle class. This bill makes it much worse.

One more thing to watch today is whether the President and his Republicans provide any details about how they intend to pay for these massive cuts. Without these details, I suspect Republicans will turn the age-old trick of promising that economic growth will make up for the entire difference. Some of them call it dynamic scoring, but that name obscures what dynamic scoring really is.

President Trump calls the media outlets fake news. Dynamic scoring is fake math. It is just made-up, fake math to hide another deficit- busting tax cut to benefit the wealthiest Americans.

No less of an authority than James Baker, a conservative Republican and former Republican Treasury Secretary who led the last successful tax reform effort under President Reagan, said:

We must not let tax revenues decline and worsen the deficit. In other words, tax reform must be revenue neutral and should be judged on its own merits.

Let's call it the Baker rule--the Jim Baker rule: Tax reform must be revenue neutral, judged on its own merits, with no dynamic scoring and no fake math.

I am amazed that President Trump, whenever he talks, says he wants to help the middle class, and his plan at best throws crumbs at some middle-class people. Some will get a tax increase, especially those in high-tax States like New York, but his plan benefits the wealthy.

Has the President read this plan? Has he been involved in creating this plan or is it the people around him--many

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of them from Wall Street--who came up with this plan, and the President doesn't even know what it does?
I will tell you, if he goes to Indiana today and says that his plan helps the middle class rather than the wealthy, he has it backward. It helps the wealthy far more than it helps the middle class.

Healthcare

Mr. President, yesterday the majority announced it would not be holding a vote this week on the latest healthcare bill, Graham-Cassidy.

Every American should breathe a deep sigh of relief.

The majority has vowed to revisit ACA repeal, maybe even with this legislation. But President Trump and our Republican colleagues should have learned from these failures that the American people do not want to cut healthcare. If they try to do it a third time, they will fail again for the simplest reason in politics: The public is against what they want to do.

This administration, which campaigned it is for the people and populist, on healthcare is doing what people don't want and on taxes is doing what people don't want. What is going on?

I remind my Republican colleagues that continuing to threaten repeal is like hanging a giant sword of Damocles above our Nation's healthcare system. It causes great uncertainty in the healthcare market, and it leads insurers to raise premiums on average Americans.

Now, I understand that for political purposes Republicans don't want to ever admit that ACA repeal is off the table. They promised it to the American people for 7 years but deluded them on what it really meant.

The average American thought that, if you took ACA off the table, premiums would go down and coverage would go up. The bills the Republicans have proposed do just the opposite, but I understand why they do it. They promised it so often. But those promises have a real human consequence in the form of higher costs for everybody. The responsibility and the blame for the rate hikes, should they occur--and they probably will--will fall squarely on the Republican shoulders.

President Trump and the Republicans are in charge. Saying, gee, something in the past caused it, when they failed to correct it, is not going to work.

My Republican friends, you are no longer in the minority. You are running the show. It is your responsibility to help bring premiums down. We want to do that and, in fact, there are good bipartisan sprouts. Senators Alexander and Murray are very close to a bipartisan agreement. Now, we hope out of pique or anger that our Republican colleagues will not reject a good bipartisan compromise that helps the American people, put together by the chair of the HELP Committee and the ranking member.

I hope and expect the negotiations to pick up right where they left off because we Democrats want to work with our Republican colleagues to stabilize the markets and lower premiums for millions of Americans. We hope our Republican colleagues will not just sit back, repeatedly threaten repeal, and watch as millions of Americans pay higher healthcare costs. That will be wrong substantively, and, politically, it will fall right on their shoulders.

So I hope we can have the negotiations pick up between Senators Murray and Alexander right where they left off. Each of them said they were close to an agreement before Chairman Alexander was pulled away by Republican leadership.

Insurers are about to set their rates for the next year, and whether we can come together or not could be the difference between a stable market and premiums that are hundreds of dollars more expensive. So for the sake of the American people, for the sake of turning over a new leaf on healthcare, let's work together in a bipartisan way to shore up and improve our Nation's healthcare.

Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands Recovery Effort

Finally, Mr. President, on the crisis in Puerto Rico and the U.S.

Virgin Islands, Hurricanes Irma and Maria have left the islands--home to well over 3 million American citizens--hanging on for dear life. You have seen the pictures, and they are devastating. Water, food, diesel, power, cell service, medicine, shelter, security, the basic needs of human survival are limited and running out in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Diabetic patients who require insulin shots are unable to keep their lifesaving medicine refrigerated. Hospitals still lack power and running water. This was a catastrophe on an epic scale. It may have been one of the worst humanitarian crises within our borders.

Now, the President has a bully pulpit. More importantly, he is in direct control of the vast resources of our Federal Government--the military, the Department of Energy, FEMA, USDA, and much more. He can direct the attention of all Americans to important issues. Previous Presidents have used this platform to focus our attention on disasters that strike our country. Barack Obama did it, George Bush did it, Bill Clinton did it, George H.W. Bush did it, and Ronald Reagan did it. The President can direct resources--boots on the ground and a structure to coordinate it all. But a President needs to act aggressively, comprehensively, and urgently, and some of that has been lacking with this President unfortunately.

A cursory scroll of President Trump's Twitter feed and public comments from the past few weeks does not show him using the power of his office to focus our attention on the crisis in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It has been a week since the storm hit and, as I said, his Twitter feed and public comments don't show him using the power of the office. When he mentions Puerto Rico, President Trump promotes his own administration's efforts and implies that Puerto Rico was partially at fault for the devastation they have been suffering.

The response from the administration needs to get a whole lot better fast.

I spoke to the Governor of Puerto Rico yesterday, and he gave me specific items that would provide immediate help. I spoke about them yesterday, and I hope the administration acts on them quickly. But most importantly, we need the administration to send us an emergency and interim aid package to pass, just as we did in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands shouldn't have to wait a second longer for aid than any other American State or Territory. We should take up and pass this package here in the Senate before the week is over.

I yield the floor.

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